Fun Weekend

We had a great weekend with Steve and Debbie Kanda as we drove up to San Luis Obispo for a three day experience of art and vineyards.

Starting off an hour late on Friday at 11:30, we motored up to SLO in the back seat of Steph's Solara (Steve and she had traded cars for a couple of weeks) and made it up to the Apple Farm Inn and checked in only to find our rooms rather small and disappointing to Debbie who had stayed there a number of other times in the much larger rooms. After Debbie and Carolyn talked with the front desk, we moved into the main inn for Friday night only at the same rate as the smaller room. This room had a bigger sitting area, a bed you could easily get around, a closet (not just an armoire), a bathroom with a tub, and luxurious robes! Much nicer.

We headed into SLO for dinner at Firestones for burgers and beers while watching the college crowd begin to assemble for a later night than we four were up for. Then back to the Inn for a good night's sleep.

We met for breakfast at 9:30 at the Apple Farm restaurant for a big breakfast and then we headed off to the quick draw competition that was being held at the mission. The artists including Robin Cloud (Carolyn's art teacher) had 1 1/2 hours in which to sketch, paint and frame a piece for the competition. It was fun to see how good they all were and their various "takes" on the same general area. At noon, they began an outdoor auction and while we tried to acquire a couple of them, they often went for several hundred dollars more than we were willing to pay. Most went from $600 to $1500.

After watching about 2/3's of the auction, we headed into the foothills for wine tasting. We sampled a few whites, but mostly reds from several wineries as we enjoyed the rolling hill vistas and warm temperatures modified later in the day by a slight sea breeze. We bought a few bottles for our new wine refrig and some argon gas to "seal" those occasional unfinished bottles. Then back to the Inn (and our new smaller, original rooms) to change and head to the evening art auction and buffet.

Skewered chicken, sausage and beef with asparagus, salads and wine from Edna Vineyards (where we had visited earlier in the day) provided us with our evening sustenance as we viewed three pieces from each of the 50 or so artists that were available for silent auction beginning with a reserve price. Most of the reserve prices were $900 and above with only a few less than that so we just enjoyed mingling and viewing with no buying.

We finished up the evening having desert at ColdStone and visiting bubble gum alley where tens of thousands of pieces of gum have been deposited along 100' of a very narrow alley as 'tributes' from students over three of four decades. No one wanted to touch the wall!

Sunday morning we had breakfast in bed and checked out at noon and headed up to Templeton to meet Dave and Tim, friends of Steph and Manny from Cal Poly, to visit Dave's workplace - Justin Vineyards. A long drive through two lane, rolling hills following these former offensive lineman led us to a spectacular winery and small inn. Dave had arranged for lunch which was excellent and then led us through the winery and the cellars which are carved out of the hillside.

Dave is the Cellar Master in charge of the thousands of barrels of wine stacked five or more high and which in December had cascaded down after a 6.5 earthquake ruining about 200 barrels of wine and leading to their Orphan bottles which were delicious mixes of a wide variety of reds. Back in the tasting room, we joined the wine club and found a former SMCHS 2000 grad pouring behind the counter. Small world.

Steve continued his driving duties which I thoroughly enjoyed as we left late and headed home with a quick stop at Peabody's in Montecito for dinner and then onto to Torrance, where we traded out cars with Steph at around 11 and made it home at midnight. The only problem was the 5:30 start to this Monday morning.

We laughed a lot and just enjoyed each other's company and heard tales from the SLO days about Manny and his 20x20 at In N Out and licking chocolate pudding out of the serving bowl at Hometown Buffet with the football squad. Those images kept Carolyn and Debbie laughing so much on the return trip that I think their ribs hurt this morning.

Pictures will follow.